


The Hollow Space

by wllw



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Cosmic Horrors, Cyborgs, Dreams, Extra Treat, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:31:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wllw/pseuds/wllw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way grows dim. Hungry chaos lurks behind the bright corona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hollow Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



**Melancholia**

In his dreams, the shadows of the men in suits stalked him across the halls and corridors bathed in sickly yellow light. Their bullets cut into him, slicing through muscle and tendon; he stumbled, kept walking. The wounds burned like fire in his limbs and with each step his vision wavered, but still he kept walking.

The knife lay before his feet like a light in the darkness, but when he tried to reach for it it slipped through his fingers.

In the end, every dream led to the same place, where the flickering lights fought vainly against the encroaching shadows and the metal groaned in pain under the stress. The noise rippled through the emptiness, and if he listened closely he could hear the whispers begin to insinuate themselves into the walls all around him.

There were Pfhor there, staring glassy-eyed into the emptiness; he left their broken bodies in the hangar. The door slid open at his approach and the sound of it echoed across hallways filled with a stillness that had not been disturbed in aeons. They were too dark and too narrow, as if they were closing down on him, and eerie, ancient symbols stared at him like eyes in the walls. His comm beeped once, twice, picking up a transmission.

_"All systems down! I repeat, all systems down!"_

_"Find Blake! Find Blake!"_

_"Oh_ God _, he's not_ there _, there's no one there—"_

He turned off the comm with a click but the voices kept shouting desperately in his ear. _"Durability,"_ they said over and over, as empty as the void facing them.

There was nothing he could do but stand there and listen as one by one the voices faded into screams, as the low, discordant hum of grinding metal gnawed at the edges of the world. The message on the terminal looped and began to repeat, red as the blood that he knew in the back of his head was about to start flowing, everywhere.

_Great Mother crouched behind the Throne, I make this wrong right._

The signal dissolved into a sea of static, and yet the screams still came through as the the layers began to peel away as everything was filled with waves and waves of screams and static and groaning washing over him, seeping in through his ears and eyes and mouth and echoing down his bones until he could do nothing but fall to his knees and scream along.

 

* * *

 

**Anger**

The red code burned in his brain. 'A group of your pathetic humans is attempting to power up one of the ship's transport pads at this location,' it said. 'Destroy them.'

The man before him was shouting something. He thought he'd heard his voice before, screaming for help at the closure of the universe. The only thing he could hear now was the jumble of code, but he could feel something beyond it, and when he tried to think the world went askew.

** Destroy them. **

The man shot, and the energy bolts left glowing trails in the air. He dodged one. The other slammed into his side with a flash, scrambling his vision and rattling his senses. It didn't disable him, so he ignored it. The man raised his gun again; he grabbed his wrist and twisted, felt the crack between his fingers. There was a scream, and the gun clattered to the floor.

This was easy. Meant he didn't have to think.

A punch to the gut and the man folded. He could end it now — just grab his assault rifle. No. Had to save bullets.

Always fight with honor, his father told him, but always fight. He'd always remembered those words, sticking out in his mind like an anchor in the chaos as he fought, as the Pfhor died, as the soldiers on the asteroids screamed before him. As if they'd been placed there.

The man was scrambling to get up, but a kick to his knees took care of that. The knife — the sword — flashed across his vision. He blinked it away.

"Durability," the man was shouting, but he paid it no mind. One punch shattered the visor of his suit, sending glass scattering all over the ground and into his knuckles. Jolts ran through his arm like electricity, but it didn't hurt, not any more. One more punch burst the man's skull and silenced the screams.

The others finished the job.

His hand dripped red when he finally stood, and the air smelled of blood. In the distance he could hear the screaming, echoing in his head — he looked around, and there was nothing there but a lone Pfhor, clicking something in its incomprehensible language. The code was screeching at him now, like the howl of static. It burned behind his eyes, and there was something pressing against his mind but when he tried to grasp it he felt it slip through his fingers.

The Pfhor still stood there, weapon ready, its three eyes darting about the room. _Always fight._ He thought about smashing the butt of his assault rifle into its head. The idea pleased him, so he did. The blow connected with a satisfying crunch, and as the Pfhor staggered back he emptied his clip into its body. The Pfhor howled as it died, leaving a long streak of yellow ichor on the floor.

He stared at the alien body and watched the code unravel, as he'd watched the world unravel — revealing the chaos that lay underneath.

_It is in your nature._

_Do you feel free?_

He felt his lips twist and realized distantly that he was smiling.

 

* * *

 

**Jealousy**

In the end, everything all led to the same place, his finger on the trigger and the circuits spitting sparks before him.

In the end, there was only one thing he knew how to do.

Afterwards, he staggered to the wall and leaned hard against it. The terminal flickered beside him; the air smelled of smoke and blood and burnt plastic, and it almost made him gag. He was probably supposed to do something, _say_ something, but his throat was dry and the static in his head muffled his thoughts in a sea of white noise. His head hurt, and the words on the screen swam in and out of focus, crawling on the edges of his vision and creeping in like worms that burrowed into his brain. He turned away.

A sword lay in pieces before him, its shattered blade dull when it had once glittered brightly — and, yet, it didn't. His brain was telling him different things at the same time, and maybe he'd finally learned to see what was really there. He looked and saw the world in sharp contours and vivid colors.

Or maybe he was just going crazy. Seemed like a good time for it.

Slowly, he bent to pick up the chip from the floor. He clutched it tightly, and the sword shard sliced his hand.

He remembered waking up in the cryotank, naked and disoriented, with Leela's soothing tones in his ears and the static in his head, dulling his thoughts — funny how you never notice some things until they're gone. He'd met Durandal shortly after, when the door to the crew quarters had slammed shut in his face. Don't worry about the door-opener, his guide had said, chuckling. He's a bit eccentric, but he's harmless.

He choked back a laugh, and it stuck in his throat like a sob.

How many times had they lived through this, going through the motions that were etched into their destiny like the glowing white words of the terminals? The answers slipped from his grasp like the details of a dream, but it didn't matter. It was different now. He knew what to do, what the white words meant. The chip was oddly warm in his hand; or maybe it was just the blood seeping through his glove.

It didn't hurt when he sliced into his temple — or, if it did, he didn't notice any more. Blood ran down the side of his face as he pushed the shard in, and he felt it running through his skull and into his brain like jolts of electricity. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as his temple burst with a rush of code and static and waves and his fingers itched and the world slipped out of alignment, into alignment, and still it didn't hurt, because—

_pr?Contents under pressure?Do not expose to excessive heat, vacuum, blunt trauma, immersion in liquids, disintegration, reintegration, hypersleep, humiliation, sorrow or harsh language?_

There. It was done.

When he opened his eyes the world was still, and the silence whispered at him as he knelt on the cold, alien floor. His breaths flowed through him like waves, and maybe he should get up, do something, feel something, but his hands were shaking and he couldn't tell why.

Another explosion rocked the ship with a boom like rolling thunder; the floor lurched under him and his vision flashed white. In the distance, at the edge of his hearing, there was the sound of a horn blowing, and he didn't know whether it was really there or if it was simply yet another tendril leaking into reality and forcing its way into his mind. It didn't matter. For the first time in so long he could think clearly, the thoughts burning themselves into his brain in bright, vivid white. He could see the stars burning, the air burning, the paths lying before him untaken and his thoughts cutting through them to **find the new way.**

The knife, the sword, the green code brushed across his mind. Leaning back against the wall, he closed his eyes.

He dreamed.


End file.
